Economic View From Main Street, Iowa

Oct. 10, 2008— -- The "World News" Battleground Bus Tour's first stop was Dixon, Ill., to see Ronald Reagan's boyhood home. We were just curious about it really -- but we were visiting at the point the market was down 700 points this morning, so we stopped off to meet the local broker.

"We're trying to encourage people to, one, to make sure they're diversified properly and, two, if it's not money you need right away, you just need to stick to it," said Kim Pettigrove, financial advisor with Edward Jones. "I am booked throughout the day, and I have a stack of phone messages I keep trying to get back to."

Across the street in the local book store, four retirees made appointments to see Pettigrove.

"Like everyone else I got that quarterly [retirement savings] report a week ago and went, 'Oh, my God'; it was just really scary," said Marilyn Coffey. "I had a total of $125,000. It was down $17,000 in three months."

Coffey's husband was more optimistic.

"I think the bottom is close and I think it will start rebounding," said Tom Coffey. "But my fear, again, is that when you retire, your needs are more immediate. So hopefully, it will rebound faster than when I run out."

Next, the bus tour was off to a family farm in Eldridge, Iowa.

Neal Keppy and his brother run a 1,900-acre family farm. They grow corn and soybeans, and raise 7,000 pigs each year for market. For them, times are pretty good.

"It's kind of like the stock market," Keppy said. "It's more volatile now than any time in history before. The market now can move up and down 30 cents a day for corn -- whereas when my brother and I first started farming corn in 2000 ... if it moved 30 cents in a year that was a big move."